Northern China is often cloaked in smog, especially during the cold winter months when homes and power plants burn coal to keep warm. Last week, Beijing issued its first ever red alert because of poor air quality, closing schools and restricting traffic.

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Vitality Air co-founder Moses Lam says he came up with the business idea last year after listing a bag of ziplocked air on eBay, which sold for 99 cents.

"We wanted to do something fun and disruptive so we decided to see if we could sell air."

Lam, who is based in the city of Edmonton, says he makes the four-hour journey to Banff once every couple of weeks and spends 10 hours bottling the air.

Photos:Beijing smog: What's it like to breathe the air?

Photos:Beijing smog: What's it like to breathe the air?

This week, Beijing issued its first red alert for hazardous pollution, closing schools, restricting traffic and shutting construction sites. Residents tell CNN what it's like to live in the smog-cloaked city.

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Photos:Beijing smog: What's it like to breathe the air?

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"It's time consuming because every one of these bottles is hand bottled. We're dealing with fresh air, we want it to be fresh and we don't want to run it through machines which are oiled and greased," said Lam.

Sales in Canada are mainly for novelty value, says Lam, but in China people believe it has a real functional purpose.

"In North America, we take our fresh air for granted but in China the situation is very different."

Wallace Leung, a professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, told CNN that buying bottles of air was not a practical solution to China's air pollution.

"We need to filter out the particles, the invisible killers, from the air," said Leung, who conducts research on the effectiveness of face masks.